@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Where the Germans should have guilt is in the foisting of the Euro upon Europe, but the Germany people were always skeptical...it was the Leadership of Germany and France who laid the groundwork for this disaster, and it was the political leadership of the rest of Europe who were at least complicate. The German people have no reason to feel guilty over the harm that the failure of the Euro causes, as had it been left up to them the Euro never would have happened. I understand that votes were taken to adopt the Euro, but the people were lied to, these were not fair votes. It is the German leadership which should feel guilty, as well as the rest of the European leadership, not the people.
Your argument is flawed and some your factual assertions incorrect on multiple levels. Perhaps you should be a bit less willing to imply that your education and understanding are better than those of others here.
All the Eurozone countries are democracies with governments elected by their people, and the acession of each to the Eurozone was done in a democratic way. There is no distinction such as you claim to be made between leadership and people on this issue.
Many elements in Germany were indeed reluctant to give up their national currrency as you suggest. That's why the so called "Stability and Growth Pact", an agreement primarily focused on limiting deficit financing by members, was concurrently created to constrain the fiscal policy of all the member states. It turned out the annual deficit and related constraints of the Pact quickly became inconvenient to even the core member states, starting with France and later even Germany, and as a result starting about seven years ago its constraints were gradually lited to the point that it bacame a dead letter. This and the obvious willful failure, over several years, to look through Greece's multiple deceptions in its financial reports to the monetary union, were the proximate cause of the Euro crisis. A key, common underlying cause was a collective failure to deal with the economic consequences of a general (outside of Germany) lack of economic growth and chronic low birth rate which caused demographic changes which made their social welfare systems economically unsustainable.
All of these elements played themselves out in the internal democratic political struggles of each country, with those concerned about prudent financial management of government on one side and the various beneficiaries of government payments (on borrowed money) on the other. All were involved. None of this is very far removed from the equally democratic process by which we too have dug the hole in which we now find ourselves.
